Former Bank of Israel Governor Stanley Fischer is U.S. President Barack Obama’s leading candidate to become vice chairman of the Federal Bank, according to Bloomberg.

If appointed, Fischer would replace Janet Yellin, who is slated to become the next Fed chief.

A source close to the matter told Bloomberg that the White House does not intend to announce the appointment this week. A White House spokesman did not respond to a request to comment.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the White House is close to nominating Fischer for the job.

The U.S. Senate is expected to approve Yellin as the next Fed chief next week.In the months preceding Obama’s announcement that he intended to appoint Yellin to replace current Fed chief Ben Bernanke, Fischer’s name came up repeatedly as a possible candidate for the job of top U.S. banker.

Fischer served as Israel’s top banker for eight years, earning broad trust from citizens. He guided the country through the global financial crisis of 2008 and maintained relative stability during that time. Israel weathered the crisis relatively unscathed.

Prior to coming to Israel, Fischer was chief economist at the World Bank an official at the International Monetary Fund. He has a Ph.D. in economics from MIT, where he also served on the faculty as a professor and advised Bernanke on his Ph.D. thesis.

Fischer has been lauded throughout the globe for his work, and was rated among the top six central bankers last year by the magazine Global Finance and best central bank of 2010 by Euromoney. He was also instrumental in promoting Israel’s successful bid for acceptance into the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

In June 2011, Fischer applied for the post of International Monetary Fund managing director to replace Dominique Strauss-Kahn, but was barred from competing for the role because of his age.

Fischer, 69, was born in North Rhodesia, now Zambia, and educated at the London School of Economics and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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